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Time Capsule, AEBS, and Ethernet Hard Drives

S

SmokyD

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jan 1, 2007
153
0
Anyone know if you can connect and fully use an external ethernet hard drive to one of the three gigabit ethernet ports in Time Capsule (or AEBS)?

That would be better than splitting the usb port with a hub. And if you can, I wonder if TM will work that way? Or would it only function as an external drive, if at all?
 
Any ideas? Has anyone connected an external ethernet HD to an Apple router (AEBS or TC) with much success?
 
SmokyD said:
Any ideas? Has anyone connected an external ethernet HD to an Apple router (AEBS or TC) with much success?
Click to expand...

I was just going to ask this same question.

And would an ethernet HD give better performance than an USB drive when connected to AEBS (I have the older version, not the gigabit).

[EDIT:] How about connecting an ethernet HD to an Airport EXPRESS?
 
LSS said:
I was just going to ask this same question.

And would an ethernet HD give better performance than an USB drive when connected to AEBS (I have the older version, not the gigabit).

[EDIT:] How about connecting an ethernet HD to an Airport EXPRESS?
Click to expand...

I haven't and don't know the answer, but assuming it did, 802.11n is about 130MB/s right now, and the older "fast ethernet" AEBS only runs ethernet at 10/100, so you wouldn't be taking full advantage of 802.11n even if it did work. Better than USB though, obviously.

As for an Airport Express, that runs at 54MB/s still, so that'd be even slower than the "fast ethernet" and probably about the same as USB. Not that USB works with that though.
 
One possibility that would take full advantage of 802.11n is hooking up 3 ethernet hard drives to each of the gigabit ports on the Time Capsule or AEBS. If that works, that would be one heck of a file server! Who needs slow USB when you can have much faster ethernet? In theory I don't see any reason why these LAN drives couldn't be used as TM backup drives for multiple machines, but I have never heard of this being done. I don't know of anyone using ethernet as a way to connect an external drive to an Apple router.

The possibilities seem endless if it can be done.
 
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